VI. BOOK former may say, "we propose such and such amendments; adopt them, or we use our power of rejection." And this I take to be the plain origin and actual rise of the privileges enjoyed, I believe, by the council-board in every British colony in the West Indies (Barbadoes excepted) of deliberating apart from the governor on all bills sent up by the assembly; of proposing amendments to such bills, and of rejecting altogether, and without any participation with the governor, such of them as they disapprove. Further than this, I do not know that the legislative authority of the council extends, and I have no hesitation in pronouncing the exercise of such an authority, when enforced freely and independently, a most necessary and useful expedient, tending to prevent violent and mischie Vous disputes between the delegates of the people and the representative of the crown. Its origin may have been illegitimate; but its adoption in the colonies for a century at least, and recognition by the crown, have given it such a prescriptive establishment, as I conceive constitutes law (g). (g) In truth the colonies gained a very important acquisition by this separation of the governor and council from each other in na teis of legislation; for, obtaining by this means ue semblance of three distinct estates, it enabled them the more easily to secure the privilege which they claimed, that their laws should be immediately in force as soon as consented to by the governor, without waiting for the royal confirmation. nature. I. AFTER all, the objections which have been CHAP. made to the present constitution of this body, arising from its want of sufficient stability and independence, are of an important and serious Men are very unfit for legislators, whose deliberations are liable to be biassed by external and improper influence. If, on some occasions, they are instruments of good, on others they may prove instruments of great evil. Yet I am willing to hope that even this inconvenience might find its remedy, if the colonial assemblies would take the subject into serious and temperate consideration. Were it required by law that no person should be appointed of the council who was not possessed of a landed estate within the colony to some given value, as an indispensable qualification, so that the private interests of the members might be blended with those of every other citizen, and were the terrors of suspension, which, like the sword of Damocles, hangs but by a thread, removed from them, they would become a respectable and most useful body (h). At the same time, (h) There arises, however, some difficulty in considering this point. While the council are liable to be suspended at the will of m. arbitrary and capricious governor (and I remember an instance in Jamaica, of seven members being suspended in one day, on a very frivolous pretence) their authority is very lightly regarded, and sometimes they are even treated with contempt and insult. On the other hand, if they were appointed for life, they might, in their legisla BOOK it will behoove the representatives of the people, in an especial manner, to keep in their own hands, undiminished and unimpaired, as a sacred deposit, the great and exclusive privilege of granting or withholding the supplies. If the council, independent of the governor and the people, shall once possess themselves of the smallest share in this most important of all popular rights, they will become from that moment a standing senate, and an insolent aristocracy. tive capacity, become formidable both to the king's representative and the people. They might obstruct the supplies for no better reason than to get a new governor. I am of opinion, therefore, that they should still be amoveable, but, in order to give them greater weight than they possess at present, they should be moveable only by the king's express order, in consequence of a joint address from the commander in chief and the house of assembly. Their present constitution certainly requires some correction and amendment: the more so, as in some of the colonies they have set up pretensions of a very wide and extraordinary nature, They have, at different times, claimed and exercised the power of arbitrarily imprisoning for contempt, and formerly even for fines laid by their own authority. They have claimed a right of originating publick bills at their board, and even of amending money bills passed by the assembly. They have also claimed the right of appropriating the publick revenue, &c. &c. All these, and other pretensions, are equally inconsistent with their original appointment of a council of assistants, to the governor, and with the tenure by which they at present exist, and ought to be constantly and firmly resisted by the people's representatives. CHAP. II(a). Houses of Assembly-Prerogative denied to be in the Crown of establishing in the Colonies Constitutions less free than that of Great Britain. -Most of the British West Indian Islands settled by Emigrants from the Mother Country. Royal Proclamations and Charters, Confirmations only of ancient Rights.-Barbadocs, and some other Islands, originally made Counties Palatine.-Their local Legislatures how constituted, and the Extent of their Jurisdiction pointed out.-Their Allegiance to, and Dependance on, the Crown of Great Britain how secured.-Constitutional Extent of Parliamentary Authority over them. In treating of the assemblies, or popular branch in the local system of colonial administration, I shall first attempt to investigate the origin of (a) In this chapter, the nature and necessary uniformity of my work compel me to tread over a field wherein the footsteps of a great many preceding writers are still visible. I presume not therefore to fancy that I can produce many new arguments myself, or give additional weight to those which have been advanced by others, on subjects so well understood, and so frequently and freely canvassed during the late unhappy disputes with America. My aim will be answered, if, instead of originality and novelty, I am found to possess perspicuity and precision. Happily, the great rights of mankind are sufficiently apparent, without the aid of logical deduction, and abstracted hypothesis. the VI. BOOK the claim of the colonists to legislate for themselves, by means of those assemblies, and to display the principles on which this claim was confirmed by the mother-country. Afterwards, I shall enquire by what means their allegiance to the crown of Great Britain, and profitable subordination to the British parliament, are sccured and maintained. FROM the arguments that have been urged in the latter part of the preceding chapter, concerning a prerogative in the crown to invest the colonial council-boards with some share of legislative authority, I trust it will not follow that the English constitution has at any time lodged in the king the still greater prerogative of establishing in the British dependencies, such a form and system of government as his Majesty shall think best. It is surely one thing to say, that the crown may introduce into the plantations such checks and controuls as are congenial to those institutions by which freedom is best secured in the mother-country, and another to aver that the crown may withhold from the colonies the ejoyment of freedom altogether. Nevertheless, were the maxim well founded, that the prerogative of the crown in arranging the system of colonial establishments is unlimited, no conclusion could be drawn from it that would impeach, in the smallest degree, the claim of the British colonists in America |